Part 7

"I do not know; neither does the professor. It is something that affects the sensory, motor, and sympathetic nerves as a whole. I shall try the different absorption treatments, and various forms of radio-activity and ultra-violet rays. Mental suggestion may do it."

"Well, good luck to you. I've a living to make curing live people."

But I did not make a living by my profession. A girl who had said "yes" at the beginning of my studies now said "no," and it needed no deep investigation to discover the reason for the change. She had come under the sway of Dartmoor's personality, and my cause was hopeless.

What made it harder was that he seemed unaware of it. He evidently cared nothing for her, busying himself with his experiments and never seeking her. Otherwise I might have had it out with him.

However, the girl's "no" carried with it a denial of all else that I valued. I was young, unproven, much wrought up, and utterly irresponsible. For the next five years my life had better be glossed over. I went to sea, and found in the wandering life of a sailor the only relief for the aching drag at my breast.

At last, being more sane than insane, I turned over a new leaf and began to save money. A few years later I found myself owner and master of a fine little schooner, and, after a few exploring and trading trips around the South Sea Islands, came upon a pearl fishery which laid the foundations of a fortune.

This done, I took in a ballast load of guano, and, ten years from the time of my departure, sailed for the Golden Gate and home. I wanted to see that girl again, married or single.

It must have been intuition, for I arrived at San Francisco just before the date fixed for her marriage to Dartmoor. I saw him first, and it was he who told me. He was worn out with his unsolved problem, and about to abandon it.

There had been something lacking in his life, he said--something that lessened his powers, but now he had found it--the love of woman. He had awakened to the fact that he loved Miss Ewing, had always loved her, and was rejoiced to know that she had always loved him.

They were to be married in a week. His living dead man would then take second place in his thoughts, and perhaps new thoughts would come.

It was sad news for me, but I gritted my teeth and congratulated him.

"You're right," I said grimly. "A few years more of this business and no woman would have you. You look hunted. Your hair is turning."

"Yes," he sighed, "I'm getting gray and old. Perhaps, as you once said, it is too much of a task for one man. I have tried every scientific appliance, but I have not stirred a single sense perception.

"And I am being interfered with. A local society for the prevention of cruelty to children is getting active. I am charged with inhumanity, and in danger of arrest at any time. Why, he could not live a week without the care I am giving him."

"Why not let the society have him? Get him off your mind. Do you expect your wife to be happy with that monstrosity between you? Give it up, Dartmoor."

"I cannot. It is my life's work."

"Then you'd better take him down to my island, where I am the law and the lawmaker. Otherwise your life will be short and your wife a young widow."

I had made the suggestion at haphazard, but he became interested at once, asked me all about my pearl fishery, and the gang of coolies who obeyed me as a king, and said he would think it over. I left him then; and believing that even as a rejected lover I had a right to see my old sweetheart once in ten years, I called upon her.

It is hard for a man roughened as I have become to describe that girl; so I shall not try, except to say that all sense of fair play left me, and that I had not been in her presence five minutes before I was down on my knees, begging to be taken back.

I almost gained my point. There were tears in her eyes, and her hand trembled as I held it. She admitted that Dartmoor's long neglect had lessened his value in her eyes, now that she had won him. But he had done nothing culpable; her promise was given, and he seemed fond of her, and in need of her.

"Confound Dartmoor and his need of you!" I growled. "I need you more. He has his man-baby and his science. You will be second. You would be first with me, Ella. Give him up--for me."

She shook her head slowly, and more slowly, while I held tightly to her little hand. Then the doorbell rang, and we heard Dartmoor's voice.

"Curse him!" I cried hotly. "Ella, I won't have it. I won't give you up to him. I'm a man now, not a bewildered boy."

He came in before she could reply. He must have seen something out of the way in our faces, for he said jocularly:

"Talking about me, I'll wager. I wondered what made my ears burn. Do you know," he said, "that there is a scientific basis for that old fancy?"

As he took it scientifically and good-humoredly, I let it go; besides, as I remembered later, my anger had left me.

"Captain," he said seriously, "I have a proposition for you--that you take me and my phenomenon, with my attendants and apparatus, down to your island, where, I presume, we will be undisturbed. When I am alone with him I wish to try some experiments that I have long contemplated, but which have been interfered with by the people of this city. I will assume all expenses."

"Come along," I answered graciously. "I won't come within a mile of you, and the coolies will avoid you both."

"And, Ella," he said, turning to the girl he thought he loved, "it will necessitate a postponement of our wedding for a while. I cannot take you down into the South Pacific on an uncertainty. You will not mind, I know; we have waited long, and can wait a little longer. You agree with me, do you not, captain?"

"Of course, I do," I answered with a leaping heart, but trying to appear unconcerned. "It's no place for a woman."

She merely bowed her head and said nothing. What she thought I could not know. Nor can I remember much of what I thought myself. Mingled with my joy over the delay, there seemed to be vague imaginings of my holding Dartmoor by the heels over the taffrail and dropping him into the water. But I am not sure that these visions did not come later.

Wrong, of course; but I was an angry and jealous man.

I saw her once more before we sailed, but could not move her. She was kind, gentle with me, and sorrowful, but obedient to the influence of Dartmoor, with no will but his. So I gave it up for the time, trusting not to a watery grave to break his influence but to his absence from her.

We transferred the freak by night and lodged it in the hold, where I had built a sort of enclosure under the cabin trunk for the apparatus. Dartmoor brought a couple of his servants along to carry on the daily exercising, and my Kanaka crew expressed no curiosity concerning the strange weights they hoisted over the side at midnight. So, we got away without trouble.

Whether or not Dartmoor exercised any mental influence over me I do not know. I felt a healthy hatred for him as the man who had taken the woman I loved, but I could not bring myself to quarrel with him. He could not force me to like him, but possibly he disarmed my resentment by his kindly feeling for me.

My island was a small affair, as islands go--merely the top of a submerged mountain--surrounded by a barrier reef with only one passage through it; and this entrance was known to no one but myself. Well up from the beach I had erected huts for my coolie divers and a comfortable house for myself on the high ground near a spring of water.

Here I purposed to install Dartmoor and the freak; but I wondered, grimly and ungenerously, as I steered through the dangerous passage and glanced at a dismantled hulk wrecked on the reef during my absence, as to the chances of anybody getting off that island without my consent.

As we let go the anchor, a man pulled out in a small dingey I kept for exploring the lagoon and climbed aboard. He was tall, elderly, and mild of face and manner.

"Glad to see a white face again," he said as he offered me his hand. "You are the captain, I believe--the white chief of these poor heathen. I am Mr. Pfeffer, a seagoing missionary, and my little craft was wrecked here last week while trying to make the passage in a storm. I am the only one saved, and I owe my life to your divers. They have been very kind to me, a shipwrecked wayfarer, and I would like to remain among them a while, if it is possible for me to do so."

"Stay as long as you like, Mr. Pfeffer," I answered. "Convert us all, if you like; but there's a critter down below that's proof, I'll warrant."

He asked questions, and Dartmoor explained. Then the missionary inspected the monstrosity.

"I consider my shipwreck as an act of God," he said, as he came on deck. "You will succeed, Mr. Dartmoor, I know you will. And I will be here, to aid you with prayer and spiritual help. For this new-born intelligence must be trained to know and believe in the goodness of God, who creates nothing without a purpose. It is all clear, now, captain. I have been brought here to assist."

I did not dispute him. Fish, yams, and cocoanuts were plentiful on that island, and I had other things to think of. An overhauling of the work done in my absence and a trip to Honolulu for supplies would keep me busy for some time.

As I was about to start, Dartmoor's two servants asked to be taken with me. I consulted Dartmoor, and he sadly advised it. They did not like the quiet life on the island and, though he had offered more pay, they were not content. I landed them at Honolulu and saw no more of them.

Their going left the manual work of exercising the freak to Dartmoor, and I grinned shamelessly. At this juncture I had half a mind to run over to San Francisco and make another appeal to Ella, but gave it up. She might not have grown away from him yet; and at any rate I could keep Dartmoor on the island as long as I pleased. To such dark depths of knavery does jealousy bring a man.

I ran back to the island, and no sooner was the anchor down than Dartmoor and the dominie appeared on the beach, shouting and gesticulating like lunatics. Then, over the noise they made, there came from the house up the hill a sound like the braying of a burro mixed with the wail of a fog siren. Then I heard Dartmoor.

"It's alive," he called, "and conscious. It can sit up."

"Great Scott," I said. "Then that's its baby wail."

I went ashore and received the particulars from the excited Dartmoor.

The whole life treatment had been wrong because of its mechanical nature. He had found himself without the strength to manipulate the machine, and had consequently resorted to hand massage. When tired he would sit for hours, concentrating his mind upon the desire that the freak would awaken--would see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. Then he would resume the massage.

It worked. The creature opened its eyes one day about a week back and moved its limbs. With the wakening of the motor nerves came a correlative wakening of the sensory and optic nerves. He could see and feel.

But the sensations were too much for him and, like a new-born infant, he set up the loud, discordant wailing I had heard. A little further treatment brought to life the sense of hearing, and after a few simple experiments it was proved that he could taste and smell.

I went up and inspected the baby. He lay on his cot, dressed in dungaree jumper and overalls, twiddling his toes and fingers, and sticking out his tongue at the ceiling; but at the sight of me he set up a roar that drove us out into the open. He could certainly "take notice."

"His lungs are all right," I said. "He'll make a good bo'sun's mate when he grows up. Think he'll start growing now?"

"Oh, no," said Dartmoor seriously. "He's got his growth. But we are teaching him to walk, and we must teach him to talk. His intelligence and memory will come with the accumulation of perceptions."

"He will talk soon," said the old missionary hopefully. "He is very imitative. This morning he repeated 'Now I lay,' but could go no farther. His first speech must be prayer, to give thanks for his rescue from darkness."

"He'll learn to swear," I said unsympathetically, "if I catch him around my pearls. Think he'll be an idiot, Dartmoor? Has he a soul after all these years of unconsciousness?"

"He has always possessed a subconscious mind," said Dartmoor didactically, "and now has the beginning of consciousness. But if he has a soul, depend upon it, it is my soul. I brought him to life, and he will feel what I feel and do what I do to the extent of his power.

"Why, that is proved now. I can quiet him by a word, or even a fixed thought of disapproval. He smiles or laughs when I do. I was frightened by a shark yesterday--just a momentary shock--but his wailings were pitiable. Yet he was out of sight of me."

"Well, all this is beyond me," I said. "But now that you've got him alive what will you do with him? Take him back to the coast and exhibit him? He'd make a fine dime-museum star."

"Nothing so cheap. I do not care to take him back until I have fully demonstrated my theory. But, in his development he will need more than my care and Mr. Pfeffer's. He needs the tender ministrations of a mother. A woman's instinct alone can tell when to punish and when to reward.

"I want you to go back home, captain, and bring Ella to me, with her mother. Mr. Pfeffer can marry us, and then you can take the mother back."

"Dartmoor, you inhuman devil," I answered with what restraint I could, "would you condemn a civilized young woman to companionship with that brute?"

"In the interest of science, yes. My wife will work with me."

"She won't come," I answered explosively. "In justice and fairness I shall warn her of what is ahead. She won't come, depend upon it."

"She will. I will write her a letter which you can deliver to her."

I acceded--I do not know why. I had sworn to drown him in the lagoon before I would lend a hand toward his marrying that girl. I only came back to myself when three days out, homeward bound.

I was obeying his orders; yet, as the days went on, I found my will power and determination growing. If I took that girl out, I vowed she would go as my wife.

Nothing of the sort happened. When she read his letter she insisted upon going, and her weak old mother fell in line. In vain did I beg and storm. Nothing I could say availed against that letter.

I could not recognize Dartmoor's right to that girl over my own, though I was compelled to yield to his greater power. On that run out to sea I did all I could to sway her. I prayed to her and argued with her, representing as strongly as I could her life with a heartless, bloodless scientist and a man-baby--a repulsive, incongruous parody on the human race; but I finally had to give up in despair.

As we sailed into the lagoon I observed through the glass the whole colony, Dartmoor, the missionary, and the gang of coolies mustered on the beach. And with them was the baby. They had taught him to walk. Clumsy and huge, he lumbered around among them, and occasionally dropped to all-fours. Even at the distance I could hear his thundering "Da, da da!"

"Nice prospect for Ella," I thought gloomily. "Heaven help the poor girl!"

I lowered the quarter-boat and sent mother and daughter ashore, for I was determined not to witness Dartmoor's meeting with the girl I loved. Yet the jealous devils in my soul were too strong for my determination. I looked through the glass at Dartmoor assisting Ella ashore, and swore dismally as he took her in his arms, kissed her on the cheek, and turned away from her to the mother.

A scream, either from Ella or her mother, interrupted the second greeting, and I shifted my glass. There was the brute baby, with his huge arms around Ella, attempting to follow the example of Dartmoor. The missionary shouted, and the coolies danced around at a safe distance.

Dartmoor acted. With a bound he had the brute by the throat and pulled him clear. Then I saw them clench, and at this I dropped the glass and sprang into the dingey.

I took only one look behind as I pulled furiously on the oars. They were on the ground in a mad struggle, the brute uppermost. Ella had fainted and her mother was bending over her, while the missionary and the coolies were well up the hill.

As I grounded and sprang out with an oar, the brute slowly rose erect, looking at Dartmoor.

"Get out of here!" I yelled. "Clear out!" and brandished the oar.

He stumbled away a short distance, dropped and crawled a little farther, then lay down on the sand. I made toward Ella.

"Is she hurt?" I asked anxiously.

"Only fainted away," answered the mother. "That creature frightened her so. He is simply terrible."

I went to Dartmoor, prone upon his back, and stooped over him.

"Hurt, Dartmoor?" I asked.

"My back," he whispered. "He has broken my back. I cannot move and there is no sensation below the waist. Where is he now?"

"Lying down over yonder," I answered. "What can I do?"

"Nothing. Protect Ella from him."

"I will. I'll murder him if need be."

"You will not need," he went on in that weakening whisper. "I did too well. He had only my soul to inspire his impulses, without my governing mind. He took my love for Ella only as his mind could interpret it, as mere impulse. He took my anger and vented it upon me. He will die with me. It is but the passing of one soul."

Dartmoor was right. He breathed his last in a minute, and I went over to the beast. He, too, lay quiet and still.

THE GRINDING OF THE MILLS

Now, be it understood at the first word that I have never believed in astrology as an exact science, or even a working hypothesis to explain the curious happenings of life which we ascribe to luck, fate, Providence, the law of cause and effect, or, latterly, to mortal mind. Nor do I offer this story with any intent to help the astrologers in their difficult efforts to prove their science correct; for it proves nothing beyond the scope of coincidence--unless, possibly, that the laws, mathematical and other, beyond human soul life, are past our present comprehension. This is merely the contribution of an experienced old man, grown gray and tired in the effort to understand his fellowman, and who has at last given up the problem, trusting that it may aid some younger investigator.

My acquaintance with them began early, very early--in fact I was present at, and assisted at, their birth, which occurred at the same moment, their mothers lying side by side on the same narrow cot in the crowded hospital. There had been a railroad accident, and these two injured women had been carried to the nearby institution where I was serving my apprenticeship in medicine. They recovered in time, went to their separate homes unacquainted, and resumed their lives, one the wife of a wealthy man, the other a scrubwoman. They never met again, nor did their lives conflict; but their children, born at the same moment, and at the same spot, lived out careers that were strangely parallel, strangely consistent with what the astrologers teach.

In my later capacity of visiting physician to that hospital I often met young Dunbar, the scrub-woman's boy, as he progressed through the ailments and accidents of childhood; and as family physician to the wealthy Lance family I as often met their pampered youngster. After a few years I noticed that if anything was wrong with one, something--not necessarily the same thing--happened to the other. For instance, young Dunbar broke his arm at the time young Lance had the measles. The latter sprained his wrist, and the former came to the free clinic the same day with a black eye, acquired in a fight. I called this coincidence for a while, until both mothers died at the same hour, of the same disease. Then I recalled that I, who had been present at that other momentous event in their widely divergent lives, was now the useless physician to each. I began to take notes, but never investigated the lives of the mothers; my studies and speculations were concerned with the lives of the sons. And I first learned that since birth they had never met.

Each in his own environment, these two boys grew up, as different in physique, mentality, and morals as can be imagined. At sixteen their characters were shaped, and at this age I invoiced their attributes. Each was what the other was not. Dunbar was a tough, Lance a gentleman; but Dunbar possessed physical courage of the highest order, while Lance, up to this period in his life, had never voluntarily placed himself in the way of pain or punishment. He would run from an angry goose or girl playmate. On the other hand, he possessed moral courage, while Dunbar was a moral coward. Lance proudly bore himself through a storm of boyish ridicule when caught playing with dolls and toy-houses, while Dunbar hid himself in shame because of defeat at the hands of a larger, heavier boy. Lance was truthful, polite, and with a high sense of honor and justice; Dunbar a liar, a bully, and a bad example. His associates were the worst in the town, and when there came the time that my safe was robbed, and the loot was found upon Dunbar, I could not have saved him, even though I had believed him innocent. It was simply a case of the People against Dunbar, and I was prosecuting witness.

Others had robbed me, and Dunbar, unthinkingly, had held the goods until arrested. I could not prove this at the time, and so Dunbar was convicted. But, as an incident in this story, on the day that he entered prison to begin a four-years' sentence, Lance, the most effeminate boy I had known in my experience, entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis, there to begin a four-year tutelage in a profession where the most masculine attributes are required.

I saw him on his four vacations at home, each time more mature, more certain of himself, more effeminate in speech and mannerisms, yet graceful in bearing and possessed of what might be called masculine beauty. He was tall, erect, with curly hair and a pink complexion, untouched by the tan of sun and sea and wind; for he had not yet begun his two years' sea cruise.

I visited Dunbar in prison as often as I saw Lance, for my own vacations took me into his vicinity. On the first three occasions he was sulky and resentful, but on the fourth and last was utterly changed. He begged my forgiveness, was earnest and hopeful of the future. He asked for books to read, and advice on his plans. I met him more than half-way, and soon learned the cause of the change in him--the warden's daughter. She had lent him her small store of books, had sympathized with him as she dared or cared, and had become his Goddess of Light and Hope. I talked with her before I left; she was a tall, willowy sort of girl with a very sweet, spiritual face--not so beautiful as compelling. She could exercise a strong influence on any man of Dunbar's rugged type. Dunbar was tall, broad, and intensely masculine. He was dark of complexion and dark of mood, for his limitations bore heavily upon him; he knew that he must start life and ambition handicapped by a term in prison. But the dogged, courageous spirit of the man triumphed over this, and he had planned for a seafaring career, in which not too much would be asked of a man's past, and not too much would be required in the way of refinement to insure success.

"For I know I'm a bad investment, Doc," he said, "because I didn't go to school when I could, and I traveled with the worst playmates I could find. But I think I can make it up. I'll have that girl ahead of me, to reach for and work for if I get her. She understands about my kind of men. There are a lot of us here."